Does military equipment lead police officers to be more violent?

[Egnever]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/30/does-military-equipment-lead-police-officers-to-be-more-violent-we-did-the-research/?utm_term=.a3b492559aa4

Might better police training make a difference? Recently, a coalition of 11 national police organizations adopted a de-escalation policy. And in Salt Lake City, after a series of controversial police shootings, the police department increased de-escalation training and even began recognizing individual officers with de-escalation awards for defusing potentially violent situations. Since that policy was instituted in 2015, no Salt Lake City officer has killed anyone.


Since that policy was instituted in 2015, no Salt Lake City officer has killed anyone.

Since that policy was instituted in 2015, no Salt Lake City officer has killed anyone.


Thought that was worth repeating . Interesting article.

[ms liberty]

1. K&R. for later. n/t

[Trust Buster]

2. I think, given the military grade weapons currently in the public's hands, using military equipment

when confronting such lethal force leads to the police being able to go home to their families at the end of their shifts.

[Lee-Lee]

3. No, it equipment doesn't change anything. But better training is always good.

The two things are not mutually exclusive.

I used to be the person in charge of managing my counties receipt of various surplus items. Here is what we got among other things

4 surplus HMMWV's for use is snow and in remote areas where an off road vehicle was needed.
Several hundred wool blankets to be put aside for disaster relief.
Several hundred cots for the same reason.
5 diesel generators for backup power at our communications sites and other places
4 old beat up pickup trucks for towing around the generators and use in bad weather.
12 shotguns. The same ones we could have purchased for $350 at the local gun store, and in retrospect given the hassle of yearly inventory and reporting it would have made more sense in the long run to just buy new ones.
A bunch of old camo BDU uniforms. Some were issued for training so that Deupties didn't tear up expensive uniforms on the range or doing other training. We kept most the time period required for us to be able to dispose of them and then traded it off to a local military surplus store who ordered us a bunch of brand new khaki cargo pants for uniform wear in exchange. Win-win, I got the department about $12,000 in uniforms just for the cost of transporting the stuff a few times, and for a department on a limited budget that was huge.


On paper if you wrote it down it would sound like we were super "militarized" because they figure the cost of this stuff at what the DOD paid new for it, not its real value when used or beat up. So on paper using the math like they did we probably received $50,000+ in "militarized" gear per deputy.

I suspect what they missed in this study is that agencies that go after this stuff do it because they have very tight budgets. I know if one department in Tennessee right now who depends on getting surplus trucks and equipment, keeping it the minimum time required and then auctioning it as part of their budget. That money is rolled over to pay to replace the patrol cars that age out every year. If they didn't do that to replace the cars they would have to cut 3 or 4 deputies from the staff, and they don't have that many to begin with.

Agencies with tight budget find it worthwhile to go after the "free" gear. It's not ideal for LE use but it can work, and if you can't afford ideal good enough is better than nothing.

But, tight budgets mean many other things. Fewer officers per shift means you work alone with backup far away often. It means you can't afford Tasers or other less lethal options for everybody. It means you can't afford to take an officer off the street for a week for a 40 hour CIT training on how to deal with person with mental illness (that in my book is a must have for every officer) or de-escalation training.

And, most of all, with tight budgets you can't afford to hire and retain the best quality people. When your paying just a tab more than the assistant manager at a fast food place makes you don't get good people. And the good people you do get are stolen away by higher paying, better budgeted and funded agencies.

I suspect what they missed in all this is the root cause of agencies going after this gear and how it is a factor. That and by using the DOD budget figures the value of what they got is widely inflated compared to its real world value so that throws the underlying data out of whack.